Viewer Discretion Advised

You know you've got something good going on when your Pediatrician walks into your exam room, stops, stares at your child and says, "Oh. My. Gosh." But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Easter weekend! Yippeeee, right? Well, some of the time yes and some of the time, not so much. Let's go with the good parts first.

Dying eggs on Saturday afternoon was fun. And of course quite messy. Bitty found that she loves the taste of vinegar and spent most of the egg-dying frenzy dunking her fingers into the various dyes and then sucking on them. She eventually moved on to sucking the eggs themselves. I did try to stop her, seeing as who KNOWS what is in those little pellets of color, but I was kind of laughing too hard. I always picture a project like this and imagine it being a really terrific activity, taking a nice long time, bringing out the creativity in my children, making close family memories... What really happens is the kids are so anxious to dye the eggs they're practically throwing them into the cups of dye with such force that the eggs are cracking (eggs that I forgot about while boiling, and thus cooked them for over half an hour...yum!) and then yanking them out so fast that they're barely pastel. At least that way they can re-dye them five minutes later when they're all done and want more eggs.

Another super enjoyable Saturday afternoon activity for us was doing a little bike riding at the playground around the corner from our house. I have such great memories as a kid of my parents teaching me how to ride my little yellow bike, and later taking off with my siblings through the country roads of our little neighborhood. Our house is on a pretty busy street surrounded by two other busy streets, so I don't see myself ever letting the kids just take off on their bikes. I don't know, maybe when they're older. Anyway, we've never put a lot of emphasis on bike riding, we've never gotten the kids tricycles, and suddenly Stomper is getting big! We've obtained two nice little bikes from friendly neighbors and Troy got them all cleaned up and fitted with training wheels and sized just right for the kids. I have to say, my heart filled with joy watching the two of them pedal around. I'm looking forward to many biking outings this spring and summer. Oh yeah, and we need to get some helmets, I know.





It was after that the fun really began. Bitty has been struggling with ear infections. Last month we tried the regular old pink amoxicillan. The infection was back after a couple of weeks. So last week we started on the next step up, Augmentin. Let it be known, my child is not compatible with this drug. Saturday afternoon I noticed a couple of red spots on her legs and thought, hmmmmm. I called my trusty advisor in all things, Becky, and we decided that it would be fine to wait until the morning to see what was up. What was up was a major reaction to the medication. I noticed spots all over her neck when she woke up, called the doc, who of course recommended that we stop the antibiotic. Sure, no big deal, here's some benadryl. Well, then I went to change her out of her jammies, took one look at her spotted, inflamed little body and just about fainted. Luckily her breathing was fine, but yikes. That was scary. So, we continued on with the benadryl. Well, Sunday night the itchies started. Wow. No sleep for Bitty or Bitty's mommy. I felt so bad for her. (And for me.) Of course she was crying about her ears again, she totally had a blazing fever, and she was just miserable.

Our little pediatric clinic opens at 8:00 and I was on the phone at 8:01. Yes, hello, I need an appointment RIGHT NOW. Dr. George was the one who walked in and stopped in his tracks when he saw her. Here's where your viewer discretion is advised. I had to take a couple of pictures to always remember poor Bitty and her journey into the realm of the truly miserable. Just so you know, she was fine - I was a little afraid that we had a trip to Primary Children's in our future, but alarmist that I am, of course I thought that. She's fine, and is, right now, sleeping soundly and has much less of a resemblance to a leopard.

Here she is in the car as we were picking up the new medication from the local pharmacy.


Here we are after the apointment getting in a dry diaper. Poor baby!

It has taken the past two days for her to really start feeling better, but thankfully she slept last night, and is sleeping now, so hopefully we're recovering. Oh yeah, I forgot about Easter. It kind of got overshadowed by the whole "I think my kid is gonna die!!!!" thing but it was nice. The kids each got a nice little gift, plus we had dinner with both sets of grandparents and a little egg hunt. Nice, yeah, but I'm kind of glad that weekend is slipping into the past.